Author: gozzter
-
A Feminist Resurgence?
Women’s Liberation -that’s what we used to call the women’s movement when I was a teenager. It sounded like a good idea to me, even though I didn’t really know what it was all about. Girls had always seemed to bring out the best in guys, so I was all for it. I still am. But…
-
A Patient Named Cindy
I enjoyed Cindy (not her real name); how could I not? Short, plump, with uncertain hair of indescribable colour that was tossed on her head like a salad begging for dressing, she captured my interest the first time I saw her in the waiting room. She was pretending to look at a magazine, all the while…
-
Can Anyone Laugh?
Frailty, thy name is woman, Hamlet said, upset about his mother’s behaviour. Perhaps Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc had bad memories of the play. In a recent speech on moral corruption in Turkey, he is quoted as saying that : “Chastity is so important. It is not only a name. It is an ornament…
-
A Placental Tale
Her light brown hair was long and tied in a little pile on the top of her head like a haystack about to topple. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes were bright, and her face was lit with the jubilation that only the young experience at the start of a journey. She was happy –her whole…
-
Pelvic Exams
Medicine has been my life, and over the years I have seen my specialty of obstetrics and gynaecology break free of many of the traditions that shackled it to the past. Obstetrics was once a superstition-clad field -a world unto itself; gynaecology was mired in taboo and cultural sensitivities that often precluded open-minded and unbiased research and therapy. To a…
-
The Justice of Justice
Okay, I’m Canadian; I do not understand the objection to universal health care south of the border. And I certainly don’t know how a society that purports to believe in equal opportunity for all could be so resistant to accepting the inalienable right of every person to access affordable medical treatment, the right to a personal choice…
-
The Asexual
Well the annual Pride Toronto Festival has come and gone again; we had one here in Vancouver as well, but this year’s Toronto iteration apparently broke all records for attendance, parade, and participation. I have to admit to my own feeling of pride that Society is making such progress in accepting –even welcoming- diversity. Especially, it would seem,…
-
The Linguistic Pregnancy
What is pregnancy? What’s in a name, for that matter..? Is it true that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, or is there something in the name itself that alters and affects that to which it refers? Neo-Whorfianism, in other words… For example, the Chinese word for what we in English…